Stressors, Food Web Connectivity, and Stability

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Wide banner of the study system Raw photo location: 20200729_145101.jpg Photo Credit: Symons Lab, UCI

One sentence on impact: In three days, we probe how interacting stressors rewire aquatic food-web connections and highlight stability signals that managers can act on.

Project brief (PDF) · View shared code · Explore data

About this site: This is a public, in-progress record of a 3-day project at the Innovation Summit. Edit everything here in your browser: open a file → pencil icon → Commit changes.

How to use this page (for the team)

  • Edit this file: docs/index.md → ✎ → change text → Commit changes.
  • Add images: upload to docs/assets/ and reference like assets/your_file.png.
  • Keep text short and visuals first. Think “slide captions,” not essays.

Day 1 — Define & Explore

Focus: questions, hypotheses, context; add at least one visual (photo of whiteboard/notes).

Our product 📣

  • Publication

Our question(s) 📣

  • How do multiple stressors impact food web connectivity in aquatic systems, and at what threshold of connectivity do we pass a tipping point?
  • Can food web connectivity be used as a predictor of tipping points?
  • Does relative abundance at each trophic level signal tipping points?

Hypotheses / intentions [Optional: probably not relevant if you are creating an educational tool]

  • If the number of food web connections approximates stability, then loss of some number of connections over a threshold will result in a significantly different food web composition.
  • Addition of multiple stressors will lead to a switch in trophic cascade structure (bottom-up versus top-down systems).
  • Addition of multiple stressors will shift food webs to contain a higher proportion of generalist species.

Why this matters (the “upshot”) 📣

Aquatic places have a lot of value - food, recreation, biodiversity, and more. Freshwater lakes are under threat from multiple stressors including changing temperatures, pH, nutrients, invaisve species, and human impact, which threaten those values.

Inspirations (papers, datasets, tools)

Field notes / visuals

Whiteboard brainstorm (replace this) Raw photo location: day1_whiteboard.jpg Caption: What this shows and why it’s useful today.

Different perspectives: Briefly capture disagreements or alternate framings. These can unlock innovation.

Day 2 — Data & Methods

Focus: what we’re testing and building; show a first visual (plot/map/screenshot/GIF).

Data sources we’re exploring 📣

  • EPA National Aquatic Resource Surveys (2019–2020): trophic state, nutrient loading, and stressor indicators across U.S. freshwater sites. We will subset to basins with existing food-web observations.

Methods / technologies we’re testing 📣

  • Data gaps / quality issues
  • Method limitations / compute constraints

  • Open questions we need to decide on

  • Network analysis with NetworkX and igraph to derive modularity, redundancy, and robustness indicators under different stressor combinations.
  • Gradient boosted trees for predicting stability responses from combined stressor intensities.
  • Interactive geospatial dashboards built with kepler.gl/folium to surface hotspots for partner discussion.

Challenges identified

  • Data gaps / quality issues
  • Method limitations / compute constraints
  • Open questions we need to decide on

Visuals

Static figure

Various water quality metrics Raw photo location: lc_water_quality.png

Figure 1. Snapshot showing water quality over time at a pilot station.

Interactive map (iframe)

Open full map

If an embed doesn’t load, put the normal link directly under it.

Final Share Out — Insights & Sharing

Focus: synthesis; highlight 2–3 visuals that tell the story; keep text crisp. Practice a 2-minute walkthrough of the homepage 📣: Why → Questions → Data/Methods → Findings → Next.

Team photo at start of Day 3 Raw photo location: team_photo.jpg

Findings at a glance 📣

  • Headline 1 — what, where, how much
  • Headline 2 — change/trend/contrast
  • Headline 3 — implication for practice or policy

Visuals that tell the story 📣

Lead conclusion visual placeholder Raw photo location: fire_hull.png Visual 1. Swap in the primary graphic that clearly communicates your core takeaway.

Supporting panels for key insights Raw photo location: hull_panels.png Visual 2. Use a complementary panel, collage, or set of snapshots that reinforces supporting evidence.

Complementary result figure placeholder Raw photo location: main_result.png Visual 3. Highlight an additional visual that captures a secondary insight or next step.

What’s next? 📣

  • Immediate follow-ups
  • What we would do with one more week/month
  • Who should see this next

Team

Name Role Affiliation GitHub
Dr. Matt Bitters TBD CIRES, CU Boulder @matthewbitters
Dr. Alyssa Gleichsner TBD SUNY Plattsburgh @ParasiticProf; @agleichs
Dr. Harrison Hartle TBD Santa Fe Institute TBD
Evan Fiorenza TBD UC Irvine @evanfiorenza
Aruni Kadawatha TBD Case Western Reserve University @AruniD0219
Ruby Krasnow TBD University of Maine @rmk118

Storage

Code Keep shared scripts, notebooks, and utilities in the code/ directory. Document how to run them in a README or within the files so teammates and visitors can reproduce your workflow.

Documentation Use the docs/ folder to publish project updates on this site. Longer internal notes can live in documentation/; summarize key takeaways here so the public story stays current.

Cite & reuse

If you use these materials, please cite:

Innovation Summit Group 4. (2025). Stressors, Food Web Connectivity, and Stability. GitHub. https://github.com/CU-ESIIL/stressors-food-web-connectivity-stability-innovation-summit-2025__4

License: CC-BY-4.0 unless noted. See dataset licenses on the Data page.